Readers write and what they want to know, many of them, has to do with the scene depicted here. Just this: did Bob Nevin ever find his contact lens that night in Chicago in 1962?

No, never did.

And it wasn’t Jack Evans who knocked it out, either. Time, then, for an update.

It was March and Toronto was at the old Chicago Stadium to play the Black Hawks. The game that ensued was “brisk, boisterous” (The Globe and Mail) and/or “tough, nasty” (Toronto Daily Star). On his way to scoring 50 goals for the first time in his career, Chicago winger Bobby Hull put away his 44^th on the night. A teammate, meanwhile, defenseman Reggie Fleming, got into a post-game fight with three already-fighting fans, which led to the rest of the rest of the Hawks joining in to help. For the Leafs, winger Bert Olmstead was knocked out just before that when, to quote a Globe and Mail account, he “plunged into the boards, head first, near the end of the game after firing a shot at the Chicago goal.” Revived, he went to the hospital for x-rays of his head and shoulder, which revealed that he’d cracked his acromion. (“Ed. note,” advised the Globe’s Rex MacLeod — “everybody has one.”) He’d be back in two weeks, for the playoffs.

The Leafs won the game, 3-2. First to score was Nevin, in the third minute of the opening period. Six minutes into the second, he was detached from the contact lens he was wearing in his left eye. That’s according to the Star; The Chicago Tribune thought it was both lenses (and that there should have been a penalty):  

Dollard St. Laurent, Hawk defenseman, first caught Mr. Nevin in the corner, lined him up, and then gave him a body slam. As Nevin started to collapse, Dolly landed a short left hook that Referee Eddie Powers didn’t see, and then collapsed on the prone Nevin — knees first.

Play continued after Nevin arose, but the swift Toronto right winger just stood in one spot motionless, yelling for help. Time was called and players from both teams dropped to hands and knees searching for the lenses. They never were found, and Nevin groped thru the remainder of the game.

The Star would commemorate the moment in cartoon a few days later, while also noting that Nevin was one of the NHL’s most improved players of late. “Bob’s improvement,” Red Burnett wrote, “goes back to the time that general manager and coach Punch Imlach started to use him as a penalty killer with Bob Pulford and moved him on the line with Pulford and the injured Bert Olmstead. It seems Nevin thrives on extra ice time.”

For his part, Harold Ballard, Leafs’ VP and chair of the team’s hockey committee, mourned the cost of Nevin’s lost eyewear. “There goes another $100,” he said.

Update: Another search for a contact lost on Chicago ice in 1965 looked like this.

In other sundry NHL contact news from the 1960s:

• Centreman Eddie Joyal was leading the Los Angeles Kings in scoring in January of 1969 when he collided with an Oakland Seals’ defenseman, Bryan Watson, and the contact in his left eye “shattered.” The Associated Press reported that while Joyal suffered a corneal laceration, “a medical doctor said there is no permanent damage.”

Dr. Robert Kerlan said Joyal will wear a heavy bandage over the left eye and miss four games or more.

How he’d play without his lenses was a question Joyal was asked back in ’62 when he was playing in the minors. “If I lose ’em,” he said, “there’d better be a seeing-eye dog that can wear skates.” For the Kings, he did return, finishing the season with 52 points. That was well back of Phil Esposito’s Art Ross-winning total of 126, but still good enough to lead Los Angeles. 

• Also in 1969, Ottawa Citizen columnist Jim Coleman wrote about 40-year-old Leaf defender Tim Horton, who just happened to have scored the second goal in that game in Chicago in 1962:

When admiring team-mates are discussing Horton’s physical distinctions, the conversation smacks of a menagerie because, when they speak of Horton, they say: “he’s as strong as a buffalo and he’s as blind as a bat.”

Horton is notorious in the NHL for his allegedly poor eyesight. Ever since he was a youngster, he has worn spectacles off the ice. When he went to [in 1949, AHL] Pittsburgh, his employers insisted that he should equip himself with contact lenses so he could see the puck.

Twelve years ago when the Leafs were training at Sudbury, Tim forgot to take his contact lenses to camp.

“I’ve been playing without them for the last 12 years,” Horton says. “I’ve been hoping that no one would notice.”

For a 40-year-old with allegedly weak eyesight, Horton is doing okay. Gordie Howe and Horton probably will be the first two men to play regularly in the NHL at the age of 50.